Employees are often driven to speak up by intense emotions such as frustration, anger, and dissatisfaction. Yet the very emotions that spur employees to express voice may compromise their ability to express it constructively, preventing managers from reacting favorably. I propose that to speak up frequently and constructively, employees need knowledge about effective strategies for managing emotions. Building on theories of emotion regulation, I develop a theoretical model that explains the role of managing emotions in the incidence and outcomes of voice. In a field study at a healthcare company, emotion regulation knowledge (1) predicted more frequent voice, (2) mediated by the emotional labor strategies of deep acting and surface acting, and (3) enhanced the contributions of voice to performance evaluations. These results did not generalize to helping behaviors, demonstrating the unique role of emotion regulation in challenging rather than affiliative interpersonal citizenship behaviors. This research introduces emotion regulation as a novel influence on voice and its consequences.

Researchers recommend a reorganization of the medical profession into larger groups with a multispecialty mix. We analyze whether there is evidence for the superiority of these models and if this organizational transformation is underway. We summarize the evidence on scale and scope economies in physician group practice, and then review the trends in physician group size and specialty mix to conduct survivorship tests of the most efficient models. We find that the distribution of physician groups exhibits two interesting tails. In the lower tail, a large percentage of physicians continue to practice in small, physician-owned practices. In the upper tail, there is a small but rapidly growing percentage of large groups that have been organized primarily by non-physician owners. While our analysis includes no original data, it does collate all known surveys of physician practice characteristics and group practice formation to provide a consistent picture of physician organization. Our review suggests that scale and scope economies in physician practice are limited. This may explain why most physicians have retained their small practices. Larger, multispecialty groups have been primarily organized by non-physician owners in vertically integrated arrangements. There is little evidence supporting the efficiencies of such models and some concern they may pose anticompetitive threats. This is the first comprehensive review of the scale and scope economies of physician practice in nearly two decades. The research results do not appear to have changed much; nor has much changed in physician practice organization.

Recent trade theory emphasizes the role of market-share reallocations across firms (“stealing”) in driving productivity growth, whereas previous literature focused on average productivity improvements (“learning”). We use comprehensive, firm-level data from India’s organized manufacturing sector to show that market-share reallocations were briefly relevant to explain aggregate productivity gains following the beginning of India’s trade reforms in 1991. However, aggregate productivity gains during the period from 1985 to 2004 were largely driven by improvements in average productivity. We show that India’s trade, FDI, and licensing reforms are not associated with productivity gains stemming from market share reallocations. Instead, we find that most of the productivity improvements in Indian manufacturing occurred through “learning” and that this learning was linked to the reforms. In the Indian case, the evidence rejects the notion that market share reallocations are the mechanism through which trade reform increases aggregate productivity. Although a plausible response would be that India’s labor laws do not easily permit market share reallocations, we show that restrictions on labor mobility cannot explain our results. JEL Codes: F13, F14, F16, O24, O25.

We examine an aspect of job search in the important context of executive-level jobs using a unique data set from a prominent executive search firm. Specifically, we observe whether or not executives pursue offers to be considered for a position at other companies. The fact that the initial call from the search firm, which we observe, is an exogenous event for the executive makes the context particularly useful. We use insights from the Multi-Arm Bandit problem to analyze the individual’s decision as it emphasizes assessments of future prospects in the decision process, which are particularly relevant for executive careers. More than half the executives we observe were willing to be a candidate for a job elsewhere. Executives are more likely to search where their current roles are less certain and where their career experience has been broader. Search is more likely even for broader experience within the same employer. In the latter case, the array of likely opportunities is also broader, making search more useful.

Our paper elaborates the effects of resource relatedness on value of a multibusiness firm. We emphasize that value results from interplay of benefits of synergy and redeployability. This view, considering how synergy and redeployability interact in determining value, extends prior separate considerations of the two benefits. We also diagnose that the value effect of resource relatedness is contingent on uncertainty and specify this contingent relationship. We use the real option valuation approach and formally evaluate the impacts of the two effects of relatedness. This explication enables us to demonstrate how redeployability contributes to value beyond synergy, and how they contribute in tandem. In this sense, we illuminate previously undiagnosed value in multibusiness firms. Beyond theoretical implications, our results have important empirical and managerial implications.

Anchored in our research on business models we delineate in this article a future research agenda. We establish that the theoretical and empirical advancements in business model research provide solid conceptual and empirical foundations on which scholars can build in order to explore a range of important, yet unanswered research questions. We draw inspiration on the direction of the business model research agenda by briefly reviewing several distinct bodies of literature adjacent to the business model literature including: new organizational forms, ecosystems, activity systems, and value chain. In doing so, we also distinguish the business model concept from seemingly similar concepts that have been proposed by researchers.

Alternatives to the archetypal model of full-time, regular employment are now both prevalent and wide-ranging. Over a fifth of US workers, and even more globally, now perform economic work under arrangements that differ from full-time, regular employment. Yet most of our management and social science notions about economic work are based on the full-time employment model. We know relatively little about the operation and consequences of alternatives arrangements in part because while these arrangements vary considerably, they are commonly grouped together for research purposes using existing classification systems. We outline an inclusive classification system that distinguishes clearly between employment and its alternatives. It also distinguishes among the alternatives themselves by grouping work arrangements into categories that share common properties and that are distinct from each other in ways that matter for practice and for research. The classification system is based on distinctions about the sources and extent of control over the work process, the contractual nature of the work relationship, and the parties involved in the work relationship. Our classification system is both informed by and reflects the legal distinctions among these categories. We explore implications of our system for research and theory development.

When making decisions, people can excessively conform to shared practices and beliefs that are inappropriate for a particular situation – or excessively deviate from practices and beliefs that are appropriate. To date, organizational behavior researchers have focused on decreasing excessive conformity but have paid less attention to decreasing excessive deviation. We thus have a limited understanding of what contexts can simultaneously tamp down both errors. To fill this gap, I integrate theories on accountability, organizational culture, and construal levels. I propose that decision makers are likely to excessively conform under combinations of process accountability and collectivist cultures. These combinations consistently focus them on the concrete aspects of a problem – and thus dampen propensities to deviate. Decision makers are likely to excessively deviate under combinations of outcome accountability and individualist cultures. These combinations consistently focus them on the abstract aspects of a problem – and thus dampen propensities to conform. But decision makers make better decisions about when to conform and when to deviate under combinations of process accountability and individualist cultures or combinations of outcome accountability and collectivist cultures. These incongruent combinations induce construal shifting, or iterative fluctuations between the concrete and abstract. People who engage in construal shifting examine how the small details fit into the big picture and how the big picture put the small details into context. My dissertation challenges the prevalent notion that incongruent organizational conditions debilitate decision making – and provides novel insights into accountability, culture, and construal levels.

Researchers have suggested that both ambiguity and values play important roles in shaping employees’ proactive behaviors, but have not theoretically or empirically integrated these factors. Drawing on theories of situational strength and values, we propose that ambiguity constitutes a weak situation that strengthens the relationship between the content of employees’ values and their proactivity. A field study of 201 employees and their direct supervisors in a water treatment plant provided support for this contingency perspective. Ambiguity moderated the relationship between employees’ security and prosocial values and supervisor ratings of proactivity. Under high ambiguity, security values predicted lower proactivity, whereas prosocial values predicted higher proactivity. Under low ambiguity, values were not associated with proactivity. We replicated these findings in a laboratory experiment with 232 participants in which we measured proactivity objectively as initiative taken to correct errors: participants with strong security values were less proactive, and participants with strong prosocial values were more proactive, but only when performance expectations were ambiguous. We discuss theoretical implications for research on proactivity, values, and ambiguity and uncertainty.

The notion of regular, full-time employment as one of the defining features of the U.S. economy has been called into question in recent years by the apparent growth of alternative or “nonstandard” arrangements – part-time work, temporary help, independent contracting, and other arrangements. Identifying the extent of these arrangements, whether they are increasing, and where they occur is the first step for understanding their implications for the economy and the society. But this has been difficult to do because of the lack of appropriate data. We present estimates of the extent of these practices based on a national probability sample of U.S. establishments, evidence on changes in their use over time, and analyses that help us begin to understand why they are used.

This paper provides the first estimates of housing price movements for Beijing in late pre-modern China. We hand-collect from archival sources transaction prices and other house attribute information from the 498 surviving house sale contracts for Beijing during the first two centuries of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1840), a long period without major wars, political turmoil, or significant institutional change in the Chinese capital. We use hedonic methods to construct a real estate price index for Beijing for the period. The regression analysis explains a major proportion of the variance of housing prices. We find that house prices grew steadily for the first half-century of the Qing Dynasty and declined afterwards in both nominal and real terms through the late eighteenth century. Nominal prices grew starting in the late eighteenth century and declined from the early nineteenth century through 1840. But these price changes occurred with contemporaneous price changes in basic measures of the cost of living: there was little change in real terms to the end of our period.

Although the stylized model of industry evolution suggests that firms transform from vertical integration to specialization over time, many industries still exhibit a continued persistence of integrated firms. In exploring this puzzle, I draw on detailed firm-level data from the semiconductor industry to analyze how integrated incumbents, beyond shifting to the specialized mode, reconfigured in the face of industry’s vertical disintegration so as to coexist with the specialized firms. I propose and find that the incumbents who persist with vertical integration increase their emphasis on systemic innovations and transact with specialized firms in both upstream and intermediate markets. The value-creating opportunities associated with integrated incumbents’ leveraging (a) their relative superiority in developing systemic innovations and (b) markets to pursue a broader menu of transactional choices may offset their costs of staying integrated. These firm-level factors also determine the pattern of industry’s vertical disintegration and the extent of coexistence between integrated and specialized firms.

Rahul Kapoor (2013), Persistence of Integration in the Face of Specialization: How Firms Navigated the Winds of Disintegration and Shaped the Architecture of the Semiconductor Industry, Organization Science , 24 (4), 1195 - 2013.

Despite the widespread assumption that extraverts are the most productive salespeople, research has shown weak and conflicting relationships between extraversion and sales performance. In light of these puzzling results, I propose that the relationship between extraversion and sales performance is not linear but curvilinear: Ambiverts achieve greater sales productivity than extraverts or introverts do. Because they naturally engage in a flexible pattern of talking and listening, ambiverts are likely to express sufficient assertiveness and enthusiasm to persuade and close a sale but are more inclined to listen to customers’ interests and less vulnerable to appearing too excited or overconfident. A study of 340 outbound-call-center representatives supported the predicted inverted-U-shaped relationship between extraversion and sales revenue. This research presents a fresh perspective on the personality traits that facilitate successful influence and offers novel insights for people in choosing jobs and for organizations in hiring and training employees.

We develop theory about how growing at work is an interpretive accomplishment in which individuals sense that they are making progressive self-change. Through a study of how employees interpret themselves as growing at three organizations, we develop a theoretical account of how employees draw from contextual and personal resources to interpret their growing in ways that embed their idiosyncratic experiences within an organization. The data suggest that employees develop three different types of growing self-construals: achieving, learning, and helping. We use our data to ground theory that explains the development of growing self-construals as deeply embedded in organizations. At the same time, we suggest that growing self-construals reflect individual agency through how individuals work with available resources to weave interpretations of themselves into their growing self-construals. We further suggest that growing self-construals influence the actions employees take to support a sense of progressive self-change.

To study value change, this research presents an intervention with multiple exercises, designed to instigate change through both effortful and automatic routes. Aiming to increase the importance attributed to benevolence values, which reflect the motivation to help and care for others, the intervention combines three mechanisms for value change (self-persuasion, consistency-maintenance and priming). In three experiments, 142 undergraduates (67% male, ages 19-26) participated in an intervention emphasizing the importance of either helping others (benevolence condition) or recognizing flexibility in personality (control condition). We measured the importance of benevolence values before and after the task. In Experiment 1, the intervention increased U.S. participants’ benevolence values. In Experiment 2, we replicated these effects in a different culture (Israel) and also showed that by enhancing benevolence values, the intervention increased participants’ willingness to volunteer to help others. Experiment 3 showed that the increases in the importance of benevolence values lasted at least four weeks. Our results provide evidence that value change does not require fictitious feedback or information about social norms, but can occur through a 30-min intervention that evokes both effortful and automatic processes.

In the human quest for meaning, work occupies a central position. Most adults spend the majority of their waking hours at work, which often serves as a primary source of purpose, belongingness, and identity. In light of these benefits to employees and their organizations, organizational scholars are increasingly interested in understanding the factors that contribute to meaningful work, such as the design of jobs, interpersonal relationships, and organizational missions and cultures. In a separate line of inquiry, scholars of business ethics have examined meaningful work as a moral issue concerning the management of others and ourselves, exploring whether there are definable characteristics of meaningful work to which we have moral rights, and whether there are moral duties to ourselves and others to fulfill those rights. In this article, we examine contemporary developments in both disciplines about the nature, causes, and consequences of meaningful work; we explore linkages between these disciplines; and we offer conclusions and research opportunities regarding the interface of ethical and organizational perspectives on performing and providing meaningful work.

We consider firms in the context of their business ecosystems and explore how differences in the ways in which firms are organized with respect to complementary activities affect their decision to invest in new technologies. We argue that, in addition to creating differences in incentives and bureaucratic costs, firm-complementor organizational form plays an important role in the firm’s ability to coordinate accompanying changes in complementary activities so as to shape the benefits from investing early in the new technology. We test our predictions in the U.S. healthcare industry from 1995–2006. The study makes a strong case for viewing firms’ competitive strategies in the context of their business ecosystems and for the existence of an important link between firms’ coordination choices and their strategic investments.

When does giving lead to happiness? Here, we present two studies demonstrating that the emotional benefits of spending money on others (prosocial spending) are unleashed when givers are aware of their positive impact. In Study 1, an experiment using real charitable appeals, giving more money to charity led to higher levels of happiness only when participants gave to causes that explained how these funds are used to make a difference in the life of a recipient. In Study 2, participants were asked to reflect upon a time they spent money on themselves or on others in a way that either had a positive impact or had no impact. Participants who recalled a time they spent on others that had a positive impact were happiest. Together, these results suggest that highlighting the impact of prosocial spending can increase the emotional rewards of giving.

Based on a comparative field study of two software development projects, we use ethnographic methods of observation
and interview to examine the question of how interdependent individuals develop and maintain mutual focus of attention
on a shared task, which we define as the group engagement process. Drawing on Randall Collins’ interaction ritual theory,
we identify how mutual focus of attention develops through the presence of a task bubble that focuses attention by creating
barriers to outsiders and through the effective use of task-related artifacts. Shared emotion both results from mutual focus of
attention and reinforces it. Through our comparison between the two projects, we show that the group engagement process
is enabled by factors at the individual (individual engagement), interaction (frequency and informality of interactions), and
project (compelling direction of the overall group) levels. Our focus on group interaction episodes as the engine of the
group engagement process illuminates what individuals do when they are performing the focal work of the group (i.e.,
solving problems related to the task at hand) and how they develop and sustain the mutual focus of attention that is required
for making collective progress on the task itself. We also show the relationship between the group engagement process and
effective problem solving.

Using survey data from two distinct samples, we found that reported integration behaviors (e.g., attending company
parties, discussing nonwork matters with colleagues) were associated with closer relationships among coworkers but
that this effect was qualified by an interaction effect. Racial dissimilarity moderated the relationship between integration and
closeness such that integration was positively associated with relationship closeness for those who were demographically
similar to their coworkers, but not for those who were demographically dissimilar from their coworkers. Additionally, this
moderation effect was mediated by the extent to which respondents experienced comfort and enjoyment when integrating.
These findings highlight the importance of creating the right kind of interactions for building closer relationships between
employees, particularly relationships that span racial boundaries.

The study considers the interdependencies between complementors in the business ecosystem and explores the nature of collaborative interactions between them. It sheds light on the organizational and the strategic contexts in which such interactions take place, and shows how they may influence the pattern and the benefits of collaboration. The evidence presented is based on fieldwork followed by a detailed survey instrument administered to firms in the semiconductor industry. The findings, while reinforcing the shift in the locus of value creation from focal firms to collaborative business ecosystems characterized by information sharing and joint action among complementors, illustrate the organizational and the competitive challenges that firms face in their pursuit of joint value creation.

Via three studies of varying methodologies designed to complement and build upon each other, we examine how supervisory ethical leadership is associated with employees’ reporting unethical conduct within the organization (i.e., internal whistle-blowing). We also examine whether the positive effect of supervisory ethical leadership is enhanced by another important social influence: coworkers’ ethical behavior. As predicted, we found that employees’ internal whistle-blowing depends on an ethical tone being set by complementary social influence sources at multiple organizational levels (both supervisory and coworker levels), leading us to conclude that ‘‘it takes a village’’ to support internal whistleblowing. Also, this interactive effect was found to be mediated by a fear of retaliation in two studies but not by perceptions of futility. We conclude by identifying theoretical and practical implications of our research.

As employees increasingly interact with their professional contacts on online social networks that are personal in nature, such as Facebook or Twitter, they are likely to experience a collision of their professional and personal identities that is unique to this new and expanding social space. In particular, online social networks present employees with boundary management and identity negotiation opportunities and challenges, because they invite non-tailored self-disclosure to broad audiences, while offering few of the physical and social cues that normally guide social interactions. How and why do employees manage the boundaries between their professional and personal identities in online social networks, and how do these behaviors impact the way they are regarded by professional contacts? We build a framework to theorize about how work-nonwork boundary preferences and self-evaluation motives drive the adoption of four archetypical sets of online boundary management behaviors (open, audience, content, and hybrid), and the consequences of these behaviors for respect and liking in professional relationships. Content and hybrid behaviors are more likely to increase respect and liking than open and audience behaviors; audience and hybrid behaviors are less risky for respect and liking than open and content behaviors but more difficult to maintain over time.